Saturday, June 25, 2011

Bad juju continues at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. The temporary pressure gauge that the workers braved the high radiation to set up on June 22 in the Reactor 2's reactor building are not working properly, and TEPCO is unable to confirm the water level inside the Reactor Pressure Vessel, or whether there's any water inside.

The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says it still cannot obtain accurate data on the water level and pressure of the Number 2 reactor. It says a provisional measuring device installed earlier this week is not operating properly.

Tokyo Electric Power Company believes that readings by the original device are incorrect due to damage suffered in the March disaster.

Workers at the utility company entered the Number 2 reactor building and installed the provisional gauge on Wednesday. The company initially planned to have the gauge begin providing data on Thursday.

But it says as of Saturday, the device is not yet working properly.

TEPCO says this is because the temperature near the reactor containment vessel is so high that water inside the device's pipes has evaporated.

Fuel meltdowns are believed to have occurred at the Number 1 through Number 3 reactors, leading to a possibility that there is little water left inside the Number 2 reactor.

Accurate measurement of the water level is essential for ensuring stable cooling of the reactor.

The utility is struggling to find ways to activate the device.

Just like AP's article, NHK World continues to talk about "cooling of the reactor" as if the fuel is still inside the reactor. NHK also says "fuel meltdowns", as if it were only fuel that melted down. Maybe it's the peculiarity of the Japanese language, of avoiding to use precise words out of politeness or tact, but in this nuclear accident it has served to obfuscate the situation and strangely mollify people's fear, delaying proper response.

Now we've heard news on the Reactors 1, 2 and 3 in recent days. Haven't heard much about the Reactor 4. Another minor thing I've noticed is that TEPCO has stopped disclosing the survey map (aka "contamination map") of the plant. The last one posted on TEPCO's site is dated June 5. It's been issued every week since March 23.

9
comments:

Anonymous
said...

Here is a proposal of what happens at the spent fuel pool at reactor 4.

Assume that the water level was reached under the fuel. These melted and produced hydrogen that exploded. The explosion remove the traces of melted fuel. The pool was refilled with water according to the Mainichi news

they are idiots, wasting human lives doing stupid things, they need to build a moat filled with zeolite around the whole site to prevent the radiation from getting to the groundwater, they need to dig underneath each melted pile and but a huge boron wafer beneath so the melted blobs cannot eat their way further down toward ground water, a la' "china syndrome".

going to your link, I began wondering does Japan have a counterpart to the U.S. Geological Survey?

At some point they 'should' take an active role in handling these reactors.

Two statements are troublesome,".. radioactive levels of seawater have been decreasing so we know there should be no big leaks from polluted groundwater into the sea."Whose measurements of seawater is he using?

"This would suggest that deeper groundwater is perhaps not that polluted at all."How will know about groundwater until wells are drilled and the water is measured for radioactivity?

Two misleading statements buried in 'plausibility'.

And claystone or not, the corium will burn through that with ease, as it will thru a 4 foot slab.

@Anonymous 6:24The article doesn't mention anything about the fuel melting or the explosion removing any traces of melted fuel. The video footage of #4 showed intact fuel assemblies. The assumption is that hydrogen from #3 leaked into the #4 building.

About my coverage of Japan Earthquake of March 11

I am Japanese, and I not only read Japanese news sources for information on earthquake and the Fukushima Nuke Plant but also watch press conferences via the Internet when I can and summarize my findings, adding my observations.

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